What do you guys think about name brand PCs

[The Pentium Guy]

I don't particularly like them.

Dell - I mean looking at Dell, they give you shared ram (not dedicated memory?).
HP - They give you bad memory, I have a stick of PC2100's in an HP i bought a few months ago.
Compaq - They're actually not that bad at all, I have a compaq with a slidable motherboard tray for gods sake...... that was so useful. And wow, a freakin duct that goes straight into the CPU.
IBM - Pretty overpriced for what you get.

Stuff that pisses me off is that they tend to use the cheapest crap they could find. I read on anandtech somewhere that monarch was selling some athlon64's that coudln't go higher than 800FSB - and compaq/hp bought from them. And also what's with the 3300+ Athlon64's ?

Also no overclocking . Doesn't really matter that much anyways.

All in all, they're not bad deals at all, you'll save money building your own PC (except for the occasional sale or so), but prices are sometimes cheaper becuiase they get items in bulk.

I guess that's what people that have no experience with computers buy.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[AwesomeJay]

what dell uses shared memory? the low end one?

just checked.. the XPS gen 4 and the 8400 DONT use shared memory..

plus you can get a radeon x800xt or 6800 . they arent that bad

 

[shoRunner]

no a64 have a fsb. a 3300+ is 2.4ghz with 256k l2 cache. compaq and hp are the same company, their recent computers are pretty good. personally i'd take an emachine, no joke. they have one using the radeon xpress 200 chipset with a a64 3200+.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Wow - go eMachines .
I meant 800HT instead of 800FSB

Yeah, some of the lower end ones as well as most of their laptops use shared ram.

 

[dullard]

Sounds like you just don't know how to buy computers. If you don't want PC2100, why but a computer with PC2100? All of those companies offer a wide variety of computers. Don't look at just one and assume the rest are the same.

 

[Ike0069]

I have 4 friends that were looking at getting a Dell. I suggested an E-machines to all of them. 3 bought the E-machines, and 1 bought the Dell. The E-machines are on avg. ~$100 cheaper for the same specs (on a low end computer, $400-$600).
All of them have worked fine. In fact, one just bought another Emachine for his daughter. He got 2.4 GHz Celeron, 512 RAM, 60 GB HD, DVD burner, 17" monitor, and printer for $399 after rebates from CC. Hard to beat that kind of deal.

 

[Gurck]

Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

 

[kini62]

Dell

:thumbsup:

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

 

[devilfish]

friend bought a HP... couldn't play games at all.. got new vid card... but the damn thing doesn't have an AGP SLOT!! WHAT A LOAD OF $h!t!

 

[dullard]

friend bought a Ford Escort... couldn't race a GT at all.. got a new GT motor... but the damn Escort doesn't FIT IT!! WHAT A LOAD OF $h!t!

 

[devilfish]

hey, i drive a 'scort

 

[AwesomeJay]

Originally posted by: devilfish
friend bought a HP... couldn't play games at all.. got new vid card... but the damn thing doesn't have an AGP SLOT!! WHAT A LOAD OF $h!t!

maybe he should have read the system specs BEFORE he bought? its not Hp's fault your friend/you cant read

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: devilfish
hey, i drive a 'scort

My point is that you don't buy an Escort to race a GT. You don't buy a GT to haul a boat. And you don't buy an Expedition to have a cheap transportation to/from work. These are all from the same company, Ford. Thus it isn't the companies fault if one machine doesn't do all tasks. It is up to the consumer to buy the machine that will fit most of his/her needs.

Same goes with Dell, HP, IBM, etc. There are office/email/internet machines, there are gaming machines, and there are workstation machines. Don't buy an office machine to play games. The office machines are great for office work only. The $299 Dell computer (with 17" monitor and printer and shipping) is a great buy if you don't need speed, ie no games! (Although personally I'd get the $479 model with P4 instead of Celeron, 17" LCD instead of 17" CRT, and with an AGP slot)!.

 

[shoRunner]

Originally posted by: dullard
friend bought a Ford Escort... couldn't race a GT at all.. got a new GT motor... but the damn Escort doesn't FIT IT!! WHAT A LOAD OF $h!t!

ROTL...wow thats so true. if you want high end don't expect a $299 special to deliever it.

i'd also go with an emachine over a dell cause they offer semprons for their low end which perform better than a celeron hands down.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

For the average person who buys a prebuilt? Harder than hell...

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

For the average person who buys a prebuilt? Harder than hell...

But they should learn. How can you be effective with your computer if you don't know how to reinstall Windows? You learn by doing it.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

For the average person who buys a prebuilt? Harder than hell...

But they should learn. How can you be effective with your computer if you don't know how to reinstall Windows? You learn by doing it.

And anyone who knows what they're doing builds their own.

 

[l Xes l]

rip offs... unless they really got some good sale going on...

 

[tren001]

I've been pretty happy with my Dell, since I got a pretty good deal on it.

Maybe I could've saved a few bucks building it myself, or be able to build an AMD system, but I guess I just didn't feel like spending all that time and effort, and it was easy to just receive a big dell box at the door, open it up and setting up your new computer.

 

[mwmorph]

dell is good if you can get a good deal. very opverpriced at msrp.

HP&Compaq are the SAME company. good deals though($600 for my game box sans the video card,monitor and mouse)

IBM is quality.

none of them offer any options for enthuist users though like ocing and my mb from hp is uATX not normal ATX.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

What's uATX? Bigger or smaller than mATX?

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

For the average person who buys a prebuilt? Harder than hell...

But they should learn. How can you be effective with your computer if you don't know how to reinstall Windows? You learn by doing it.

And anyone who knows what they're doing builds their own.

I know plenty of people who know what they are doing but buy pre-built.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: Gurck
Compaq and HP (which have merged btw) preinstall adware on their PCs. This alone should be reason enough not to buy from them.

How hard is it to do a clean Windows install? The HP Media Center PC is great.

For the average person who buys a prebuilt? Harder than hell...

But they should learn. How can you be effective with your computer if you don't know how to reinstall Windows? You learn by doing it.

And anyone who knows what they're doing builds their own.

I know plenty of people who know what they are doing but buy pre-built.

I've never come across one. Regardless, there's more to it than that - financially supporting a corporation doing things you don't agree with (few of us agree with spyware) is hypocritical.

 

[ts3433]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
What's uATX? Bigger or smaller than mATX?

uATX I believe is microATX; the "u" being meant to look like the Greek letter Mu for "micro-"